


Clean Up on Aisle Twelve

by matrixrefugee



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 14:21:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17448635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixrefugee/pseuds/matrixrefugee
Summary: A chance grocery run offers the Green Arrow an opportunity to help some workers in need...





	Clean Up on Aisle Twelve

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](https://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/profile)[fic_promptly](https://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/)'s [any superhero fandom, any, shopping for groceries](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/243418.html?thread=9599962#cmt9599962). Featuring Oliver Queen and John Diggle. Inspired by actual events that took place at the [author's work place](http://time.com/money/3024511/market-basket-ceo-demoulas-protest/). Featuring my occasional self-insert OFC, Allison Maguire, the frazzled bagger.

"You should be getting an email from your mother," Diggle said, hanging up his phone and pocketing it as he opened the rear door of the car for Oliver. "She's got a grocery list for you."

"Grocery list? Don't we have a personal shopper to do that?" Oliver replied, innocently as he got in.

Diggle looked at Oliver patiently. "Your mother asks you to do something, you do it," he said. "No matter how simple it looks. No work is below you, when your mother's involved."

"Got it, and there's the email," Oliver said, his phone pinging. He took out the phone and pulled up the email. "And she wants us to pick up a few things at Grocery Bag."

"There's one not far away," Diggle said, getting into the driver's seat, pulling his door shut and pulling away.

* *

They slowed down to pull into the lot of the plaza that held the store, passing by a row of ordinary people standing on the sidewalk before it, holding up signs and chanting: "Grocery Bag strong, all day long!" "Bring back Adie K!" "Thank you for NOT Shopping at Grocery Bag". Cars passing by honked their horns to them, while passengers in others waved and cheered.

"What's all this?" Oliver asked, innocently enough.

"Worker protest: the CEO of Grocery Bag, Adrian K. DeSmet got kicked out by his nephew, Adrian J. DeSmet, and the workers rose up," Diggle replied. "Adie K. was a decent guy: cared about his workers, made sure they got paid well, but still kept prices low for the shoppers. Knew all the workers by name, goes to their loved ones' funerals, helps with their medical bills when they're in trouble, used to roll up his sleeves and bag when he visited a store and he saw an open register without a bagger. Adrian J, on the other hand... we'll say he doesn't have quite the same business model."

"Looks like something out of an old movie," Oliver said.

Once they entered the store, they found a different story: the store looked clean and tidy enough, with the workers dry mopping floors and tidying shelves, but the dairy case looked like the cows had gone on strike, the meat case looked like vultures had stripped it and the produce department looked as though locusts had attacked.

"Okay, that's just weird," Oliver said. "What's going on?"

"I'm sorry: we've had no perishable shipments," said a bespectacled girl in a red work apron bearing her name tag. "But if you need anything else, I'd be more than happy to help you find it."

"I'd much appreciate that... Allison," Oliver said, eying her name tag, as Diggle joined them with a green plastic shopping basket. "So what's going on?"

"It's a long story: the warehouse workers and the truck drivers went on strike after Adie K. got kicked out by his -- pardon my lingo -- idiot nephew," Allison said, falling in step beside Oliver as he roamed the shelves. "Adrian J. brought in some replacement workers, but they're doing a terrible job: the shipments we did get, those came in looking destroyed. I don't know if they did a sloppy job loading the trucks or the drivers are that unsafe, but we can't accept the things that show up."

"So why is the store so quiet? this place is usually packed this time of day," Diggle said.

"The shoppers started boycotting the place, no one or next to no one wants to shop at a place where they know the prices are going to go up and the workers' wages are going to go down," Allison replied.

"Can't say I blame them, in that case, but that's gotta hurt your paychecks," Oliver said, concerned.

Allison wagged her head. "We take it as it goes: it's all you can do, anyway."

"Maybe we should shop somewhere else," Oliver said, darting a look to Diggle, but it also looked like a Look. One that Diggle couldn't help inwardly groaning, knowing what it meant.

"Up to you," Diggle replied.

"Let's get that Camembert my mother needs first: she'll give me hell if I get the wrong brand," Oliver said.

Allison raised the index fingers of both hands. "You're someone, aren't you?" she said.

"Everyone's someone," Oliver said, lightly, giving her what he meant to be an embarrassed look.

"I mean, I've seen your picture somewhere: you're Oliver Queen, right?" she said.

"Guilty as charged," Oliver said, giving her a disarming smile.

"Sorry if I'm star-struck: you stare at tabloids in the checkout as much as I do on a slow day, you start to daydream about meeting some of the famous faces you see," she said. "I'm sure you get this a lot."

"Ah, don't worry about it: at least you're one of the more subdued ones," Oliver said.

* *

Another board meeting, more inane wrangling from his uncle's side, Adrian J. DeSmet thought as he left the main office attached to Grocery Bag's warehouse in Starling City that night. If only the old man would stop trying to live in a Frank Capra movie and live in the twenty-first century. Times had changed and you had to know how to drive your workers instead of molly-coddling them, to get every ounce of productivity out of them and to maximize the company's capital.

He had just reached his car -- which he thought he had parked closer to the building -- when, from out of nowhere, something whizzed. DeSmet felt a searing pain cut into his shoulder, and he looked down to see an arrow standing out from above his collarbone.

A tall, robust figure armed with a bow loomed out of the shadows, its face obscured by a hood.

"You shot me... you shot me with an arrow!" DeSmet snarled

"Adrian J. DeSmet, you have *failed* Starling City and the people who depend on your store," the figure snarled, in an almost artificially deepened voice.


End file.
